


Chiaroscuro

by silverlined



Category: Samurai Warriors
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-15
Updated: 2010-12-15
Packaged: 2017-10-13 16:34:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverlined/pseuds/silverlined
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SPOILERS FOR HANZO'S SW3 MUSOU MODE ENDING: A ninja is a tool.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chiaroscuro

Shinobi are not born, but forged. Shadows and blood, they are living weapons to strike whenever ordered.

When Nene marries, she sends out wedding invitations

He sends her a kunai in reply, wrapped in the finest silk. No blade was ever content to be kept sheathed.

 

They work together, sometimes, his lord and hers fighting for the same cause, serving the same man. He watches as she smiles and glows, abandons the shifting grey of living shadows for gold and bronze.

The brightness of her blades matches her smile, both useless for stealth.

They fight, back to back, the flash of her ground blades against the blackened steel of his chains. Long familiarity; he can see her attacks almost before they're launched and he's wasted his breath many a time telling her not to be so predictable. (It doesn't explain how she can read his moves just as well, flowing around his chains like molten gold.)

 

She tells him that the fighting will not last forever, though her hands are calloused and the brightness of her smile marred by blood.

Foolish, he calls her and she only laughs at him.

"One day," she says to him in the middle of a battle, her footwork light and sure though the ground is slick and the air filled with smoke and pain. "We'll be out of a job." She spins and expertly slices through an enemy soldier's caratoid artery, dropping him soundlessly. "What will you do then?"

We are shinobi, he tells her. Shadows can be nothing else.

Her laughter is as light and bright as the sunlight, surrealistic through the smoke haze. "We can be so much more than that, Hanzo."

She slips through his defences like water, coming in close beyond the long range of his weapons. A butterfly touch on his cheek and she spins away again, landing a hard kick on an officer's chest. (The soldier's ribs splinter beneath her foot, the shards driven into his heart; the angle she kicks at is precise and perfect.)

"I think you need a hobby," she smiles, breathing unaffected. "Perhaps you should take up the flute."

The drum beats change before he can answer; victory is theirs once again. She doesn't bring the topic up again but a delicately carved bamboo flute appears in his quarters one day while he's out on a mission. There's no note and the traps that protect his room are undisturbed.

 

Kotaro Fuuma laughs as he fights, but does not speak. The flash of his teeth, the paleness of his skin like bone laid bare. They've fought together before, and against each other in minor skirmishes, in battles that end with retreat.

There will be no going back today. His lord demands it.

The Hojo fall but the Fuuma do not fall with it. They scatter like the wind, and he returns to Ieyasu with empty hands.

They cannot be caught, he reports and thinks of Fuuma's despairing eyes and hair red as heart's blood.

Ieyasu nods and dismisses him. What cause would a weapon have to lie.

 

The seasons pass. He learns to play the flute, fumbling in the deep silences of the forests and hidden shadows. Her clan grows around her, foundlings taken in one by one. She never has any children on her own. Ninja don't.

She laughs and cries over them, sending them into battle and following them all the way. Family not by blood shared but blood spilt. Battle after battle, campaign after long campaign: once again, the Tokugawa and Toyotomi find themselves on opposite sides of the battle field.

She sends him a note by carrier pigeon; his own, specially trained by his hand. _I'm sorry it had to come to this,_ it says and he doesn't crumple it in his hands but drops it into the candle that lights his room. The pigeons come to her, to the whistle that he taught her so long ago.

He whistles and it comes to his hand. A twist, and the body falls limp. There can be no concessions for this battle.

She gets her reply in the form of a kunai in her window frame, centimeters from her empty hands. _Don't be._

 

A weapon strikes where it is aimed, but even when Hideyoshi dies, Nene continues fighting. One by one, the Toyotomi fall. Some by his hand - all blood looks the same once spilled.

It's only in the aftermath, when the fighting ends only because the commanders have all fallen, and the blood haze fades to silence and smoke, that he can take measure of the bodies that litter the ground. Too many. Enemy and ally, he walks pass them soundlessly, searching.

Fuuma, a weapon without a wielder. Kunoichi, who only understood loyalty. And Nene, who had never allowed any of them to forget their humanity.

Silent, he arranges her on her back, not flinching at the blood that smears across his hands. He's no stranger to how she bleeds but the heat of it is startling against the coolness of her skin. And in silence, he puts down his sickle and chain.

The sound of the bamboo flute, low and sweet, carries over the hush of the abandoned battlefield as night slowly fades.

She still smiles.

"You're a kind man, Hanzo," she tells him and her voice is faint, too soft. "You're playing for all those lost in this terrible war, aren't you?"

He orders her not to speak, but she finds the strength to smile at his stiffly held back.

"It doesn't matter. Finally..." her breath catches and he holds a note for a second too long, waiting. "The land is safe." He can hear her breathing, the wet rasp as blood fills her lungs but she's always been the most determined of all of them. "Look, the sun is rising again."

She stretches out one pale hand, calloused and scratched and marred with dirt and blood. Beautiful.

Rest, he tells her and can't stop himself from reaching for her. His voice is too low but she ignores it, eyes unfocused, dark with pain.

"We're creatures of darkness." Her voice is little more than a whisper and the distance between their hands can be measured in ideals and heartbeats. "It's time for me... to... sleep."

Her hand falls.

He curls his fingers into a fist. Shadows, he thinks and deliberately relaxes his hand to pick up the flute once again, turning to watch the rising of the sun.

 

The fighting did not last forever and he plays the flute in the in-between times, the cessation of fighting and the quiet missions to ensure peace.

The new dawn only grows brighter but light has only ever found meaning with the existence of dark.

He plays and does not forget.

**Author's Note:**

> chiaroscuro: (Italian: [kjarosˈkuːro] "light-dark") strong contrasts between light and dark; the interplay of light and shadow.


End file.
